I don't save copies of rules, but my recollections are that when ORD-DEL was launched, it created a "loophole" for xONEx that was fixed after a few weeks or months?

Is CX Limiting AA's Booking of Long Direct Flights from North America?
 

Yesterday I rerouted a DONE4 to create the following itinerary:
CAI-LHR-PHL-YYZ-JFK-HKG-PER-SYD-AKL-SYD-HND-SGN-HND-LHR-CAI
The airports in BOLD are stops.
Today, this was confirmed OK and rated and was paid for.
Then I asked for my wife's ticket to be set up identically.
The AA RTW agent, much more efficient in my view than the one yesterday, tried several ways and was unable to book the direct flight JFK-HKG (or YYZ-HKG) but could book a flight through the west coast, such as LAX
The message she kept getting was "No direct access" which I think means CVX is not letting AA sell the longer direct flights
For now, I booked
CAI-LHR-PHL-YYZ-JFK-HND-HKG-PER-SYD-AKL-SYD-HND-SGN-HND-LHR-CAI
which works but uses up another segment. (It also generates an extra 80 SC's, but requires an extra change of planes).


The agent had two theories:
1. CX started today limiting availability of long haul flights to AA, explaining why I was able to book a flight yesterday.. That limiting might be coming had been discussed at the AA Oneworld Desk. JL is not limiting access so JFK-HND-HKG works.
2. AA software is transitioning; agents now do not need to enter the carrier; they just enter the end points and the available flights come up.
But the software is new and the agent felt it is possible it could have a glitch in it which results in those CX flights not being available today.

I am considering calling AA again in a day or three to see if JFK-HKG becomes available. (AA have offered to convert the first DONE4 itinerary to match the second with no rerouting fee if I decide to go with the HND transit and give up on getting a second direct flight.

Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions about how to proceed? Would contacting CX have any possible benefit?

Thanks

could it be the fact that CX JFK HKG is overflying Russia, and you are on an AA ticket?

That is possibly a contributing factor.
Do CX and AA not get along?

But the policy changed from Sunday to Monday.

FWIW, on Sunday, when I was able to book CX 843 on October 23, Expertflyer showed D5 for the flight; Monday, when I was unable to book a second seat, Expertflyer still showed D5.

I've done 3 DONEx itineraries in the past, all booked through the AA desk. I'm planning another one and this time want to credit some segments to AS, which earns more on BA numbered flights than AA ones. Itinerary is starting off as OSL-LHR-JFK and the AA desk wants to issue LHR-JFK as its own codeshare. So, should I book through BA to achieve this and if so, do they have a competent RTW desk and how do I reach one?

There is no BA call centre dedicated to RTW/oneworld fares. FWIW, when I bought Circle Trip Explorer oneworld fare (now discontinued) from BA about ~10 years ago, I have just called up their regular call centre; the arbitrary agent was competent.

While keeping in mind [MENTION=392902]BNELHR[/MENTION] recent experience with CX, I did go ahead with booking an ex-JP DONE3 with them. I hoped that having a simple 3-continent itinerary, which was successfully priced by the online tool, would save me any trouble.

I'll share my experience.

1. Building itinerary.

CTS->HKG (CX)
HKG->TLV (CX)
TLV->MAD->TLV (IB/I2)
TLV->CMN->TLV (AT)
TLV->JFK (AA)
JFK->MEX->JFK (AA)
JFK->DFW->ANC (AA)
ANC->SFO (AS)
SFO->JFK (AA)
JFK->DEL (AA)
DEL->HKG>CTS (CX)

This was successfully priced by the online tool, after some hiccups with transit/stopover points. Note: any itinerary with JL as the first carrier produced errors at the very first stage of price evaluation.

2. Price. 656K (base) + 128K (taxes/fees) JPY. Taxes/fees 128K breakdown: 60K amounted to carrier surcharges, 30K of which were due to the TLV->CMN roundtrip with Royal Air Maroc.

3. I have selected flights, validating itinerary and proceeded with booking through the online tool. One is requested to enter name, FF number and credit card info. Completing the details in the OW online tool produced a booking with CX (first segment carrier). I was sent a booking confirmation email advising me to contact CX within 96 hours to arrange the payment.
Eventually, a credit card that I provided with the oneworld online tool has not been used.

4. Contacting CX for payment.
The good thing was that there was no discussion about DONE rules/itinerary at all. It looked like the booking was treated as valid. The agent was just dealing with processing the payment. The bad thing was that it took about 35 minutes for the agent to generate an email with the payment link. I was on hold most of the time.

It took 23 (!) more minutes to add my BA FF number. FF number was not successfully passed from the oneworld tool to the CX booking. The agent has struggled to add it to the booking.

5. I received my e-ticket 2 hours after finishing the phone conversation with CX.

FWIW, if you have a CX segment in your itinerary then on the CX web site you can apply your FF number, in my case BAEC number, to the entire itinerary. Note the the ticket does not have to be issued by CX, most of mine are issued by AA, and a few from BA, and AA occasionally screws up the FF number so I always (when I have a CX flight in my itinerary) go to CX web site and apply my BA FF number to the entire itinerary and it has always worked like a charm.

Their web site has changed a bit since the last time I had an itinerary that included CX (pre-Covid), so just go to Manage Booking and click or find a booking as a guest on the right and enter your name and Record Locator/PNR. Hopefully they still have this capability, but I don't have an itinerary with a CX flight right now so can't provide further instructions on how to get to where to make FF number modifications; perhaps someone else can provide more details and/or let us know if this capability still exists.

Does anyone know if you are able to book a RTW ticket through a travel agent? The itinerary that I am looking for ex-CPT can only be done with QR as the first carrier so cannot be done online and I don't have enough will to live to deal with QR themselves. The only other option is change departure point to JNB and use CX but the online tool keeps telling me there is not a single D seat available for the whole of October out of JNB on the direct flight to HKG.

Yes. You may struggle finding a competent travel agent though. Have you considered booking through the AA rtw desk?

Thanks. I have but my itinerary would have no overwater sectors on AA for mileage reasons so don't think AA would be willing to issue the ticket.

Congrats for going that far with the online tools and successfully ticketed by CX. Thanks for the data point.

I must be behind on the updates of the rules. (see BOLDED portion of itinerary in NA). Is backtracking (SFO-JFK) coast to coast in NA allowed now? It must be, otherwise the online tools would have flagged it.

Can someone enlighten me on this, as I am contemplating an ex-JPN DONEx at the moment. TIA.

You can fly any direction you want as much as you want in the contiguous 48 states but you can only have one transcontinental (as listed in the rules). You cannot backtrack after flying to Hawaii and only 1 flight to and from Alaska.

The SFO-JFK is the only transcontinental in the flights you highlighted.

Interesting - you were able to successfully book ex-CAI with AA? There was a post further back that said AA is not booking these again.

I have a question on BA flight numbers attached to AA operated flights. For example AA255 JFK-LAX which is also BA4685. Normally these flights are bootable only in conjunction with connecting BA flights from the UK. But if an AONEx is ticketed by BA, could one get a booking on the BA flight code which would yield more miles etc., even if it is not connecting to a BA flight to or from the UK?

Thanks!